Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke and this is Pastor Cameron. Today we're going to be talking about what does it mean, or not what does it mean, but why are we even doing this podcast?
Why should this podcast exist? What are we going to be talking about? What's the whole purpose of this whole thing? And why are we even calling it Uncut? So Cameron, why are you and I sitting at at this table, what was the whole idea behind even trying to start podcast?
Well, I mean, I think it goes without saying that like the world probably doesn't need another podcast.
Probably not. Probably not. But I remember a conversation that you and I were having where we were talking about like the podcasts that we listened to and the podcasts that we wish existed.
Yeah. And this one, at least to our knowledge, or like we haven't found one that exists like this.
And we think that there's a benefit for it. So like the whole premise of the podcast is that in a ministry context or even not even just not, certainly we're pastors. And so that's the
perspective and the life that we're kind of like bringing to the table and talking about. But but it goes for followers of Jesus in general,
Christians in general, or people of faith in general.
That there is the conversations that we have about faith.
And how those conversations kind of maybe like dovetail or integrate with like cultural issues,
or maybe like things that we always hear people say in church and like inwardly we like there's a there's a conversation that we're having inwardly.
And then there's a conversation that, you know, because.
Because I think we're fairly like nice guys and want to be like gentle and compassionate and kind and caring that the words that come out or our response is not always, it's nuanced.
It's filtered through like, okay, like there's a necessity to be extraordinarily pastoral in this moment, to be gentle, to understand the dynamics of relationship.
Obviously, that's a good thing. That's not something that we like. And there's a reason we do it. There's a reason we're pastors. We both have kind of more, I think.
I think we would both describe ourselves as having more of a shepherd's heart than maybe some of the other archetypes of pastoral conceptions?
Yeah.
Because there's a early in ministry for me, I was the other way. I was like all of the uncut stuff inside it just came out at a person.
Sometimes it was appreciated, but a lot of times it did damage. So I had to learn and the Lord had to change that in me throughout time so that I have
a more, maybe a more gentle or pastoral response in certain situations.
But there still is this need to have kind of like an uncut, unnuanced, unfiltered voice or response to issues of faith and life and questions of church and Christianity or the
Bible or whatever the case may be. And what I've been like, it's my opinion that is that there's people want to hear those things. Like they're sick of like the, they're a
little bit sick of like the overly sensitive, overly curated, overly thought through, perfectly nuanced response to everything.
That just doesn't square with reality.
It doesn't really speak to maybe some of the deeper issues. And so I think like the whole purpose of the podcast or the aim of the podcast is that you're going to be getting a different type of, a different type of like response from,
you and I.
Yeah. Well, I mean, so it sounds like you're trying to bring back maybe part of your voice that like you've maybe you've had to kind of strain in kind of learn to understand and and maybe use more judiciously in pastoral ministry but give it a little bit more room to kind,
of flex. Yes.
I myself, I'm the complete opposite. I'm the guy that like I'm like, oh my gosh, I'll apologize. Somebody like I feel like I just came on really strong right there was like really getting angry. I'm so sorry.
And they're like, what? They're like, you've told me times before where you've been like, I'm really angry right now.
I was like, Luke, if this is you angry. So like for me, I'm trying to even just, I'm, it's like a, been a significant growth area to speak my mind, be like a hundred percent honest and like, and kind of actually lean into some of that.
Like it's cause it's not that I don't have those thoughts. It's just that nobody hears those thoughts. And you know, there is like, there's something good to, I think, talking about issues in
ministry and in church and popular Christian culture in a way that kind of just cuts through it a little bit and kind of gets to it.
Because like we could, like I want to be charitable, right? And I think we should be charitable generally. But sometimes things just aren't all that good. And we're like, well, we know that they have best intentions and things like that.
Well, yes, that's kind of assumed. But it's also sometimes it's easier, I think, just to say that we just don't think that that's right.
That's not right. Right. Or you shouldn't do that. Or stop it. Because that is the reality. There are those. are those?
There just are those times and there are those situations and there are just things that are for a person who Follows Jesus and is a disciple of Jesus are categorically wrong.
Right and and if you don't have anyone speaking into your life to say that's wrong Stop doing that. Yeah, right then you're in a dangerous place place. You're in a real dangerous place. So. Well, and I think also, I mean, that's,
that kind of addresses maybe some of the tone. What is, what is kind of some of the topics.
Like what's kind of driving even the topical choices that we're going to be making?
Yeah. So like sometimes you and I will encounter an issue in ministry, like just in the office on a day to day basis and we'll have maybe a 10 or 15 minute like completely non-planned,
unscripted, non-researched just out of like the depths of our soul and our heart conversation about it.
And we get to the end of the conversation and we're both like, people need to hear what we just talked about.
Like what, like where the conversation went and how we got there. Not because we're so smart and we know it all.
I don't. But because the conversation that we just had was really important and think that we
could be a blessing to people's actual faith development, not just read a two paragraph devotional every morning development, but actually deeply seated faith development and the patterns of like the way that our mind thinks and processes through things.
And so we encounter these issues all the time in our daily lives as pastors and as shepherds and as two guys trying to disciple people into faith of Jesus.
And so we've been kind of like making a mental list and then when we decided to start a podcast, we've been making like a list on paper about things that maybe we encounter more often
than not or that are like, I guess I don't want to say push button issues, but that just like keep coming up.
What is the relationship between shame, guilt and the love of God, God's love for us or how does shame and guilt operate?
Does God use shame and guilt to draw us close to him essentially? Or what does it mean when someone says, that's not biblical?
Or I think one of the ones that we're kind of both excited about is like, what is the relationship between the current nation of Israel and the New Testament church?
Yeah. Like the church right now, the Christian church right now. Yeah. Does that impact how we live in this world?
Right. And then there's always these, you know, like cultural issues that come up or things that are like popping off in the culture.
And it might not always be appropriate to have those conversations from the pulpit because we're dealing with a much wider variety of people and we have a specific goal to exalt and lift up Jesus Christ in those moments and draw people into faith with him.
So it just stands as like a, it gives us an opportunity to maybe talk about some of the more difficult issues to talk about without a sense of like needing to guard our words with this pastoral responsibility to preach across a large variety of people.
Yeah, I'm curious. Say a little bit more about that because I imagine that people might wonder, like, well, why don't you just talk about some of these things in the pulpit?
You get 45 minutes every week. Why are you maybe holding some of these back?
Why aren't we talking about those there? So the pulpit is not a soapbox for what Cameron is angry about.
It's not a place to stump for particular positions or to see an issue in culture and to react against it and to use that stage to give me a reactive place against the things in the
culture that I think are wrong or not of the Lord or anything like that.
And what happens is that when we see the pulpit as that, then it becomes really easy to do that every single week. And so we become our ministries, become our preaching ministries.
They become reactive to the things in the world, and we end up just chasing the world around, right? chasing the tail of the world all the way around, like reacting, reacting, reacting, reacting, reacting.
And in my preaching life, I want to take a more like intentional approach towards pointing people towards Jesus every single week as best as I'm able, as faithful as I'm able, so that we're.
Making sure we exalt and glorify and lift up the name of Jesus and we proclaim His word faithfully And we do that comprehensively.
So we're not just hitting on the scriptures that bolster our particular opinion or our point, but that we're giving people the whole counsel of scripture,
that draws them into relationship with Jesus Christ and creates an intentional path to discipleship rather than just be like, well, I'm here to talk about what angered me this week.
And...
Because you know in a church of you know, like when you have 150 200 people sitting in front of you There are people in the room that have no really has zero relationship with Jesus whatsoever, right?
They're there because they're curious or because they were invited or Or they needed a warm place to hang out on a Sunday morning and we welcome them and that like we want to we want them.
To be at home here and then there's people who have been following Jesus faithfully for 50 years, right? And who are better theologians than you and I, and who
like are more faithful in their reading of scripture and like saints. And so, okay, how do you stand up and preach something that is the bread of life for that wide swath or
that wide variety of people?
There's also this element in which I feel like we probably could do a whole podcast episode on our thoughts about preaching and philosophy of preaching. Maybe we will. But,
I think one of the things that gets lost is that preaching is part of worship. The way we use the word worship, we use it almost exclusively to refer to musical worship. But as part of the worship that happens on Sunday mornings.
Us talking about maybe the intersect, obviously there's times and we might choose to, but it's not always appropriate for us to dive into the complexities of the theology of the.
Church and Israel and how that interacts with political and sociological decisions that people are making.
When the point is to be worshiping God through the proclamation of His words. Yes. So...
Two more questions. The first one is, is this podcast for everyone? Who is this podcast for? Well, I mean, I would say that, yeah, it is for everyone. But I think that anyone who is listening
should manage their expectations about what they hope to receive from it. Because we're not here,
Are we here to preach?
No. No, we're here to have like some really honest, uncut as is the title of the podcast,
uncut conversations about things that there could be and is usually a variety of opinions on.
So you might be hearing an opinion on something that you're like, wow, I didn't know that they believe that.
I didn't know, like, that's not what I believe. And what we're not trying to do is we're not trying to say that this is the only way to, this is the only perspective that you can hold on this issue.
And so if you happen to be a person that's watching the podcast and you go to conduit or you don't go to conduit and you hear something or like, well, I don't agree with that, right?
That's okay with me. I'm assuming it's okay with you. Yeah. Right.
But it also doesn't, for me, it doesn't mean that like, oh, we can't be in relationship
I can't be your pastor or you got to leave the church because you believe something differently than I do. I think probably we're going to get into some of those issues about what is Christian
unity and what is it like? Can you be in a church where you don't believe everything the same,
as your pastor or the people around you? I think it's actually really, really healthy spiritually to not do that with secondary issues or have questions about primary issues or whatever.
I would say that this podcast is for anyone who wants to be kind of like see behind the curtain of honest and raw discussion of two guys who have been doing ministry for a combined like over two decades, two and a half decades, maybe a quarter of a century. We'll say that.
Yeah, well, it depends how professional, what do you mean? Professional ministry and all that.
Yeah, right. And who have, you know, like who have some thoughts on things and who have like kind of been around the block with these issues for a while. So if you're up to like Bye!
Having honest conversations then I think this podcast is for you whether you're a seasoned Christian new one Okay, and then the last thing is kind of you know Obviously a lot of the conversation is kind of starting and initiating with you and me here.
But we've talked about wanting to include other people in the podcast What are the ways that you see us doing that right?
So like we understand that there may be sometimes questions that you would love to like man I wish the pastor would preach on X, Y, or Z, and it'd be great to hear him talk about this issue or that scripture or whatever.
Maybe you've asked that and I've said no or not now or in a different series, but some of those things are maybe more appropriate for the podcast than they are the pulpit anyway.
What we did was we created a phone number that you can text questions to or issues or topics or whatever and that maybe every few weeks or something or when we have a list
of them, we'll do a mailbag episode where we scroll down through some of the mailbag questions and we answer them as best as we can as uncut and as unscripted as we're able.
That number for our listeners is 716-201-0507.
If you have a question, text it into that mailbag number and we'll get it. Of course, we'll be holding your names confidential.
We're not going to be like – Luke asked a question about toenail fungus today. Segway into our sponsor.
And so yeah, I would love, I'm excited about those episodes because like, obviously I've got things that I want to talk about, but I also want to, I want to be helpful for people.
Yeah.
So use the mailbag. Right. We want people to be able to ask those questions. I think it's like healthy and I think maybe it's something we kind of encourage here.
Maybe this is a one way we can do that is the let's talk about the things that nobody feels like we should be talking about.
Yeah, or maybe there's shame and guilt, or there's taboo around the topic. And people are forming opinions about those things. Anyways, you have thoughts they're impacting you.
Let's talk about it. Let's actually let's let's dig into it. So. All right. Well, I think that's kind of it for this,
preview. If you're listening to this, wherever you're kind of listening, we're gonna have this podcast up on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube. Look for it there, subscribe and then you'll see,
all the coming podcasts here in the future.
Great. Thanks for joining us.
Music.